John Dempster: We open our arms to one another, symbolising love

What spoke to me most at mass on Tuesday was the sight of dear Michael, like me an older man, kneeling at the altar rail, hands cupped to receive the sacrament.

Seeing Michael’s gestures as he knelt reminded me that we are not simply spirits inhabiting physical machines. Our bodies worship along with our hearts and minds just as Jesus, through his body, expressed the God who was in him.

We stretch our arms high, saying ‘Yes! Yes!’ to God, and find this gesture somehow connects us with the joy of Father/Mother God. Hands turned upwards in our laps, or Michael’s cupped palms express an expectant readiness to receive.

Our tongues speak out words of faith: sometimes we find this very act makes the beliefs catch fire in our hearts once again. We dance in worship, our whole bodies expressing the joy of partnering with God. We open our arms to one another, symbolising love and acceptance.

Not just in church, but in everyday life, gestures and actions and the care we take of our bodies in diet and exercise can become an expression of our faith and love to God and others.

Some Christiann like me, through awkwardness or shyness, or the constraints of their church’s style of worshipping, find it difficult to say ‘Yes!’ to God with their bodies. But when I stand in the kitchen, hands raised in response to the utter beauty of a piece of music, I know I am also saying ‘Yes!’ to the Beauty of which all other beauty is a pale reflection.

Physical gestures only have power for good if genuine - if body, mind and spirit are in agreement. Or if, though our minds are full of anxiety and doubt, the gestures reflect our deepest longings. Gestures for the sake of conformity, or to draw attention to ourseles, can only damage us.

All these reflections came later. My immediate thought as I watched Michael lowering himself at the rail was ‘I don’t want to kneel!’ Something in me didn’t like the idea of acknowledging the great Immensity in this way. I rolled my eyes. How foolish to think I could live and flourish without God when I know perfectly well it’s only in saying ‘Yes!’ to God, to the tide of life that I become who I am meant to be.

Soon it would be my turn to kneel, and in my heart I longed to place my knees on the cushion where Michael’s knees, and the knees of many, many fellow-worshippers had rested.

I knelt. And when Father Iain placed in my palm the wafer dipped in wine, I took it, and did eat.

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